RedMere, a developer of smart HDMI technologies, is introducing a 30-pin, portable HDMI cable for the iPad 2 and other Apple products to replace the clunky Digital A/V adapter consumers had to buy separately.

The company has also embarked on a marketing campaign, mainly through its manufacturer and some retail partners, to educate the industry about the benefits of the new lines of portable, ultra-thin HDMI cables that will start hitting the market in greater numbers during the next few months.

RedMere creates the chips behind active (or “smart”) HDMI cables, which are being sold and marketed by Monster, Vizio, Radio Shack, Samsung, PNY and Buffalo Japan. With the proliferation of portable devices, such as tablets, smartphones and digital cameras and camcorders, Peter Smyth, RedMere’s founder and CEO, believes it’s time too start evangelizing portable HDMI cables and their different usage models.

Smyth estimates that more than 600 million finished products equipped with HDMI connectors will ship this year and will more than double to 1.3 billion products in the next three years. The U.S market for HDMI cables, he added, will top $250 million this year and will double in the next two years.

“Consumers don’t think about attaching a digital camera, camcorder or tablet, to their TVs,” Smyth said, adding that less than 2 percent of consumers buy an HDMI cable with their cameras, mainly because most retailers sell standard HDMI cables that are bulky and difficult to carry. “There’s a huge market opportunity that’s not being tapped by retailers.”

Portable HDMI cables have a mini “C” or micro “D” output on one end and the standard “A” connector on the other, or a combination of all three.

They are typically about 2.7 millimeters thick, compared to the 9.7 millimeters of standard HDMI cables.

In the past, the industry has not been ready to adopt portable HDMI cables on a wide scale, Smyth said. That is now changing, Smyth said, based on the popularity of tablets, smartphones, digital cameras and other devices that record and store high-definition videos.